Vintage Wallpaper

Vintage wallpaper, printed to order rather than found in an attic: Victorian bouquets on black, Arts and Crafts poppies in sage linework, Art Deco arches on navy, Morris's Strawberry Thief and Fruit, rows of hand-drawn trout. Nearly two hundred designs drawn from patterns first published between the 1860s and the 1930s.

Choosing vintage wallpaper

Where it works

Vintage pattern flatters rooms that already have some age in them, picture rails, panelled doors, a fireplace, but it is just as useful for giving a plain new room a past. The dark Victorian bouquets, Peony Bouquet and Midnight Bouquet, are for dining rooms and studies. The Arts and Crafts designs, Sage Poppy and the Morris Fruit Light, are the bedroom and hallway choices, dense but light on their cream grounds. Navy Deco, hairpin arches pinstriped in gold, is the one for a bar, a cloakroom or a hallway that wants 1930s glamour rather than a garden.

Picking between the designs

Pick your decade. The 1860s to 1890s are the Morris and Victorian designs: Strawberry Thief Red and Fruit, Burgundy Sunflower, Wine Chrysanthemum, Sage Damask with its mirrored Victorian repeat. The 1890s to 1910s are the Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau group: Sage Poppy, Engraved Peony in woodcut line, Pink Tulip in strict mirrored pairs. The 1920s and 1930s are Deco: Navy Deco, and the arches and fans elsewhere in the range. Then there are the designs that are vintage by drawing style rather than date, Speckled Trout in rows on cream and White Vine in fine white line on black, both of which read as old prints without belonging to any one movement.

Related

Each era has its own collection: Victorian wallpaper, Arts and Crafts wallpaper and Art Deco wallpaper. For a short history of how these patterns were first printed, read History of wallpaper.